Dreaming
by laDestruction
Summary: Bellatrix and Rodolphus explore the lands between sleep and wakefulness as they face feelings that will change them forever. Insomnia, wishful thinking, estrangement. Abstract.
1. and all is unanswered

**and all is unanswered**

„Let go of me. I mean it," Bellatrix spat. She felt her vision quiver. She squinted. Druella relinquished her iron grip on Bellatrix's wrists. „What have I done again, anyway?" Her thin voice was grating, terrified. Her own ungrateful daughter – sat unassuming and unceremoniously on the floor, tilting her head, paying her outrage no heed, asking: „So, who put the boards over the windows?" Narcissa's small blonde head was timidly hidden halfway behind their mother's skirts. Barely seven years old, and already the ways of her older sister began to escape her. Father hadn't bothered to interrupt his studies.

„You did it yourself", Druella grated venomously. Bellatrix studied the luscious rug, vaguely blinded by the single ray of light that managed to worm its way into the room.

Narcissa lingered behind for a little while after she had ducked from out their mother's way as she thundered from the room. „Mother's right, Bella," she said quietly. Her face was oddly smeared. „What do you mean." Flat with disinterest.

„They nailed the windows shut on the third floor so you wouldn't throw yourself out." Bellatrix watched as Narcissa shuffled out the door. She plopped down on the carpet. Resentfully she stared up at the drapings of the pompous bed. She stared at the dust particles that were filtering in the sunbeam, in slow motion, like they were suspended in time. She imagined herself in a timeless place. She dreamed of a place with no ceilings.

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_She had never kept photographs. She couldn't stand the way the shifts in people's poses in the frames would endlessly loop on repeat. If one looked on for too long, the feelings you had for the depicted ones seemed to wear and thin out, much like a carpet, that, scuffed by feet too many times, became threadbare. So when her mother put a framed picture of her and her husband on their wedding day on her nightstand for her to cherish and hold dear, she took it out and threw it away, along with the thousand words it said._

_Pretentious fuckers. _

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Years from now she would come to routinely remember the night Narcissa burst in on her as one of the major turning points of her life.

(Her sister had an annoying habit of walking in on people and witnessing things she really didn't want to know and possibly never should. She was the kind of person that would smash a tea cup in an argument, then cut herself, and paint herself as the victim afterwards. If Bellatrix came to think of it, smirking, Narcissa wouldn't even dare to smash the cup to begin with.)

It had been her first kill in His name. His name. His eyes, His livid eyes, His hands –

Bellatrix had dreamt badly that night. One would think it was quite common for a murderer to be haunted at night by the victims' face, but it didn't apply to her. Her sleep was unaffected by her days' doings, always staying a peaceful time of infinite fragrant rest. She slept like a stone. Not that night. And never again after that night. And it would stay that way for all relevant time. She tossed and turned. Sweat beaded upon her brow.

When Narcissa came in to check on her, raised by the muffled moans that issued from her sister's room, she was horrified (but actually far from surprised). _It had to catch up with you one day_, she thought sadly. Bellatrix trashed on the bed, the covers having been kicked to the floor before long. When Narcissa sat by the edge of the mattress to feel her forehead, she noticed Bellatrix has begun to claw furiously at the insides of her arms in her sleep – rusty blood had stained the sheets below her already and smeared a good portion of her nightdress. _My God,_ she thought. _You're dreaming until your sheets turn red, because you're dreaming brutally real things. _She moved forward, shaking her sister out of her reverie, slapping her to wake her, frantically trying to pry her cramped arms open. Bellatrix came awake silently, but in motion, scratching her and kicking her in the shin while doing so, came wide awake with dripping red wet hands. „Bella!"

Bellatrix issued a low hiss, crouching by the head of the bed, favoring her arm, eyes wild.

„You've been dreaming, Bella."

Bellatrix swallowed thickly and followed her sister to the bathroom without further ado to have her cuts bandaged. She didn't want them healed magically. Narcissa sighed. Bellatrix was not one to fight with.

A week later she noticed how Bellatrix would ever so often pick at the almost healed tracks when her gaze grew distant and cloudy. Narcissa wondered what she should be more concerned about; the wounds that walked all the way down from the insides of her elbows to her wrists didn't seem to bother her sister. It struck her that Bellatrix had never seemed the wistful type before.

_I breathe you in_

_( and never out again )_

_xxxxxxxxxxxxxx_

Bellatrix despised social gatherings of any kind. She couldn't remember a single party she had enjoyed, if she came to think of it. At least no party held in a official frame with names to uphold and pretentious people to converse with.

Whenever she was tired of smiling and pretending and of her no-good husband sucking uselessly in the background and her sister fawning over hollow shite, she left, going to the chambers upstairs to get herself a breather. The noises of laughter and talk filtered up to her. How she abhorred it. Answering questions she wasn't sure she should know the answers to. Even Cissy wouldn't leave things to herself that were clearly meant to be left to herself. She remembered her initiation. She remembered former school mates standing beside her, all clothed in black that was nothing new to her but so mysterious and dark _and suddenly something else entirely. The wind in our eyes. Your naked veins promised us death. _

They all wanted. Wanted something, were looking for something. Bellatrix thought herself above such things. She didn't have lovers, she had possessions. But that was the difference, wasn't it? Wanting and having. Ownership came to her naturally. She took pride in that, among other things. She never was one to pussyfoot around the issue, however uncomfortable it might be. She was honest with herself. She was painfully honest with herself now, so suddenly, standing in the wind near the lantern with tears on her face.

The same thing.

The old hurt.

She was sore.

And what the lips said the body had known for long – _leiden leiden LEIDENschaft - _

It pulled her into the one direction she could never possibly go. The old fight that had kept her from finding peace in sleep all those years ago was still haunting her, burning up her insides. The very same fight that had raged upon that sullied mattress. Her own cheating heart was thundering inescapable magic into every cell of her being. She felt it throw itself against the confines of her ribs, like a bird wanting to flee its cage. She understood. And then, consequently, she too started to want. She yearned for cold fingers, wanted to lie in the snow, in wool, wanted to lie sleeping, wanted to... breathe coldness, wanted to smell nothing but what he gave to her, wanted to lie in the snow and nothing else. Lie there and be silenced. Let he snow cover her until it threatened to bury her and smothered her to death. With happiness.

Happiness. Fall to spring. Everlasting fragrant rest. Salt mingled with water and her face became the sea.

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_Fed up with all those who_

_come with words, words,_

_without language_

_I went to the snow-smothered_

_island._

_The wilderness has no words_

_The unwritten pages spread out_

_in every direction.  
><em>

She longed for Him. She longed in every waking moment. Scratch that, she was longing when she slept. 

_I found a doe's tracks in the snow._

_Language, but no words._

_-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx_

Disclaimers

Poem and subtitle taken from and by Tomas Tranströmer, freely translated

"Leiden" means "suffering" in German. "Leidenschaft" means "passion", vaguely, but I don't think it does the term sufficiently justice. It's not powerful enough. But maybe that's just me, feeling more connected to my mother's tongue. You just can't write love letters in a language that's not your own.

Review please!


	2. apnoea

**A P N O E A**

Rodolphus had never been a religious man. When his wife turned to adoration and worship of a pale-skinned deity that was as cruel as it was grand, he remained outside. He had never learned to follow others on a road he was not quite sure it was his own, too, to take. His hands were empty.

He couldn't keep up. The tapestries of their home were smeared with his anxiety. He liked to believe it was a beginning. It had ever only really been a beginning, and he regretted it. How she put him on. Bellatrix was abrasive, and in the long run it was tougher than he'd expected.

And while he failed to believe in the workings of time, or his own head, in his own strength, the credibility of their Cause, though never spoken, he decided he would stand by his love. No matter how it ended. He believed in her. He was sure of that.

He listened to the sandy drone of the radio that sat in the corner. _If my man was fighting / Some unholy war / I would be behind him / I'd be right beside him / With strength he didn't know. _He scoffed. Those silly love songs always led people to misiterpret. The strength that was much harder to come by in life was not the rash, stone-busting kind that shone in a few memorable moments and monumental decisions. The kind he needed, and craved, was the silent enduring one that made him keep going even through strain and wear that ate away at him with every passing day. It was hard. Little did he know. Life had never been hard on him before, he mused. Love, love, wretched suffering.

_He can't lose / With me in tow_

_I'd refuse to let him go_

Is this enough shelter and this is called Happiness? Maybe you only need to turn around once more.

Bellatrix turned from her husband. She moved from his gentle hand he used to try and gently coax her to find sleep, finally. He cracked one eye open, straining. „You really need to sleep a lil' bit. You' ve been up for nearly three days now", he rasped sympathetically. She found his face with unseeing eyes. Suddenly she was angry at him for doing absolutely nothing.

He wouldn't see. She was far from resenting him, but he didn't understand. He didn't get things. She focused just in time to see his mouth lilt open with a grunting snore. _You are asleep – I won't attempt to wake you. You don't believe – I won't attempt to make you._

_Fool._

_These are surfaces I want to describe to you_.

I feel: nothing.

Do you want: absolution?

She couldn't sleep. She couldn't. Her body couldn't go on any longer but her head only wanted to begin, to spin, keep spinning, keep leaving tiny marbles clutttering the space all around her, hurling them out with every movement of her salty eyes. Smears of colour on her retina followed the lights as she spun.

Panging in her chest, noise in her ear, thoughts running, sweat-soaked; He kept her up would not let her lie down or rest – her weary head - her wired brain. North – east – south – floor. Her skull was oscillating and the humming would not cease.

Staying awake always left her sullied. It mad her unclean. She was unable to shake the thoughts from her mind, shake the feeling that something was off and broken and never would be quite the same as it was before. Now that she had realized the most terrifying thing – she never felt that kind of love for Rodolphos, now she came to really think about it. She did not love him. As simple as that. She wouldn't be feeling dirty for that kind of realization, though, she wouldn't put herself through such things; she felt more like a stone in the desert the laden winds kept washing over, leaving their stony remainders in every crevice.

She chipped away at the minuscule portions of dirt that kept attaching themselves to every nook and cranny of her hands. The rims of her nails. Then peeling at the dead skin around it. Getting hold of a small flap, pulling, tearing it down all the way past the base of her thumb, leaving a red moist line where her flesh was revealed. She proceeded to fray the hole out further.

Whenever the need to chew the flesh off her fingers subsided, she went and treaded over to the fewsteps leading to the garden that adjoined their makeshift bedroom. She left scuffs on the carpet where she had placed her feet, in the shape of her soles.

She blinked particles out of her eyes. The garden was left growing wild, left to itself. Bellatrix was grateful for that small piece of neglected land. She liked the garden. She felt the cold soil beneath her heels, felt its wetness sticking to her skin between her toes. The floor was sticky.

_We kick what we love with our feet._

_Omnipresent noise buzzing grains of sand scraping each other fueled by the ever-rolling spray of the sea sandpaper on her eardrums her sanity - _

She breathed in, out. Red dots were streaming out with her breath. The air was so _heavy humid_ it felt like breathing water. Green water of a small lake alive with thousands of small twitching creatures. She walked down to the shore the lazy water rubbed itself against, not really lapping, not really managing to build proper waves. The blades of grass were looking at her. At the edge, _I feel thine hands_, and waited. She wanted to become a snail. A snail without a house. Born slippy. Not gathering sand when it crept. Wanted to dissappear into the Earth beneath the dirt, to vanish, to dissolve, wood, dark, cold, wet, dying.

_In the depths of the soil slides my soul / silent like a comet_

_-x_

Disclaimers

Lyrics of „Some Unholy War" by Amy Winehouse

Lines „YOU don't believe – I won't attempt to make ye;

YOU are asleep – I won't attempt to wake ye" by William Blake.

Last line by Tomas Tranströmer, freely translated.


	3. teeth sinking into heart

**teeth sinking into heart**

_Bellatrix tried to swallow the vast plane of the night sky with her being, tried to suck it into her body, the stone jar of her heart. Particularly the moon she wants to devour, but only because it reminds her of Him and the lovely bones of his pale skull. She imagines Him turning to her, she imagines bathing in His vermilion gaze. His eyes are melting - _

_Were I with thee - were, if , might. Desire, crave, yearn._

_There it is. Mars. She has to narrow her eyes. She observes the tiny orange ball. A sandstorm that tears across the expanse of eight million square kilometres; looks like spores on a fuzzy peach from here. She lets her foot twitch and it splashes up the black water at whose shore she is seated at. Light moves across the lawn as a door opens. _

_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx_

Rodolphus confronts people. He is quite good doing that, and so is Bellatrix. They've been in the Dark Lord's services long enough to know when it is time to gather information and when it is time to ditch the talk and get their hands bloody. However, Rodolphus cannot tell if the time was quite right to shrivel up and die. Instead, he watches himself being kept on pins and needles by the one who was meant to warm his mother's heart. Which she does not, of course. Not even if his mother was still alive. She barely graces his bed anymore to keep him warm. _But tomorrow, maybe tomorrow, maybe she will_, his tired heart's sinews pipe up, hopelessly; Rodolphus is not a masochist - well, at least he is no idiot - he can spare himself the suspense by accepting the answer is not fucking hardly.

Shame. He rolls in it. Smelling, mad with fear and loss, ultimate shame, self-hate. He watches from afar as his wife desecrates herself before a man that does nothing but exploit her. He hears her giggle, breathily, a girl in love, with iron particles in her lungs only he can see. Rodolphus laughs, and it is a terrible laugh, a laugh that means death inside. As Bellatrix looks at him with her feverish eyes, only descending from the high of the kill, her husband's blood a tiny speck on her sleeve (he cut his cheek accidentally. It had been a battle - someone must get hurt), there was never anyone as far away from him as her, his own woman. They've grown up together, they've grown living with each other, and now, he feels, they have started to grow apart. Sometimes he hates his ability to feel. Sometimes, times that have been few and far between earlier, he wants to shut his eyes and ears and simply not care anymore.

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_He dreamt he was treading on dry brown grass, looking down on Bellatrix's form who was sitting in the cool dusk in the garden. He remembers frowning down upon her, since she was sitting on the shore of a black stream with her feet hanging over the edge and dangling in the water. "Embrace me", he says. As Bellatrix doesn't turn he looks down on his disappearing fingers in the mist. He is standing on Titan, far away, his feet shrouded in methane. _

_He is noticing the smell of flesh on the night air. He leans over Bellatrix's shoulder to take a look at the water and sees himself reflested on its surface, brightly ablaze like a straw dummy at St. Patrick's Day. He does not feel the pain. He does not feel himself burning. Then, he feels himself extinguish._

_xxxxxxxxxxxxx_

Rodolphus knows how to hurt people. He does know how to protect himself from hurt. He knows his ways. He is still laughing. All this is useless to him now. He functions with his ancient lizard brain stem whenever they look at each other. He pulls himself together, knowing it is never healthy to show weakness in front of Bellatrix, because she will take advantage of it - not because she really and whole-heartedly wants to, but because that is what she always does. He decides to play on till tomorrow. He decides to not make a statement, about not being what he should, about feeling ill. He turns his head, silently, slowly, and now hates not himself but his entire inescapable race. _Never showing the way it looks inside_, he seethes._ Never doing what the inside wants. How dumb we are, we humans, how stupid_. "Tell me something, honey", he drones, "do you love the damned?"

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Bellatrix raises the newspaper to her face, raises it so close that her nose almost touches the paper, scrutinizing it, absorbing it, the tiny ink dots branded into her irises, She wants his image to be emblazoned on the inside of her skull, on her retina where the sun doesn't shine to bleach it and the stares don't reach to see it. She is treading along the familiar lines, the little indentions like a blind man would run his faithful finger along braille script to lead his way, she wills them to form His face, frozen forever in the movement that repeats itself like a broken record.

In the picture, He turns, looks over His shoulder; she tears her head up abruptly. She wheezes and lays on the bed. She can't bear to see His face. It is too unbearably beautiful. A wall of fire shoots into her head. She embraces the pillow, squeezes it with all her strength, pushes her body into His, melanges their atoms. For always. For always. Eternally.

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Disclaimers:

"stone jar of [my] heart" - by Emily Dickinson

"teeth sinking into heart" - by Rachael Yamagata (it's an album, one I've never even listened to, but i thought the title was beautiful)

Review please!


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